Cape Town-based intelligent automation company DigiBlu is stepping up its Gauteng presence by appointing Rolf Eichweber as executive: Johannesburg.

Eichweber's career spans well over a decade in retail banking, fintech, business process optimisation, IT and venture capital.

He is one of the three co-founders of TYME (now TymeBank), where he led the negotiation of the deal that saw the Commonwealth Bank of Australia purchase TYME in January 2015 to form the foundation of its digital banking strategy for emerging markets. He assumed the role of CEO that same year.

In early 2013, TYME and its Namibian partners applied for a bank licence in Namibia. TYME built and took live a full-service digital retail bank in Namibia called EBank, which was acquired by First National Bank in 2017.

Eichweber also led the team that wrote the bank licence application to the South African Reserve Bank and secured the go-ahead for provisional status in 2016.

Prior to co-founding TYME, he spent eight years as a director at Standard Bank SA, across several roles in channel, distribution, operations and customer strategy, ending up as the bank's director for financial inclusion and electronic channels, Africa.

Eichweber says he feels fortunate to be at the heart of the robotic process and intelligent automation industry, which is altering the workplace as we know it.

DigiBlu, with its partner Thoughtonomy, is focusing on 'process-as-a-service' via its Robotic Operations Centres, he says.

"Intelligent automation is the way of the future. Too many organisations are wasting fortunes in lost productivity, through disengaged workers and gross inefficiencies. This isn't sustainable. Today's robots work around the clock on mundane and repetitive activities with no need to take breaks, freeing up people to focus on higher value activities.

"I have no doubt that intelligent automation is set to transform the workplace as significantly as the machines of the first industrial revolution did many years ago."